pasture

Latin, pastura.

Of the major appurtenances, pasture is one of the most irregularly recorded. It is impossible to credit that there were less that half-a-dozen patches of pasture in the whole of circuit 6. The recording of pasture does not even appear to be consistent within single counties; only for circuit 2 does the data appear to be reasonably consistent and reliable.

The terminology is also various. Pasture is normally described in Domesday in terms of the number of sheep, or of livestock, it would support; but in six counties linear measures were given, and in circuit 1, and occasionally elsewhere, pasture for pigs (dena) is recorded.

Despite this, there can be little doubt that pasture was a major economic resource. It has, indeed, been argued that much of the undoubted wealth of England in the eleventh century was derived from the export of wool, and that sheep were more numerous than at the height of the medieval boom in the early fourteenth century.

For more detail, see H.C. Darby, Domesday England (1977).